News Story

Creative Assembly have now released Patch 5 for Total War: Rome II, which includes full Steam Workshop support and a new faction for free: the Seleucid Empire. Fixes across "pretty much every part of the game."

There's more Campaign Map optimisation, with better framerates when fog-of-war recedes. Diplomacy should be stronger to with AI now taking personality, threat etc. seriously.

Creative also reduced the number of AI armies near a players' when force marching, an garrisoned citizenry will reinforce friendlies outside the settlement.

"The Seleucid Empire is now a playable faction in single-player campaign and multiplayer games," posted Creative. This free content drop is also graced by Patch 5 fresh-faced from testing. "This patch contains a large number of improvements across pretty much every part of the game," they continued.

"Among these are a number of optimisations to Campaign Map performance, which improve framerates with the fog-of-war and when there are many armies, navies and agents on-screen. We’ve also sped up end-turn times in situations where the player has multiple allies."

"There have been further improvements to diplomacy as well. The campaign AI now encourages factions to form allegiances based on personality, perceived threat and the existing balance of relationships the faction holds. Players can also see relationship information by hovering the cursor over factions on the map in the diplomacy screen."

"We’ve also reduced the chance of AI armies standing close to the player in Forced March mode – thereby reducing their chances of being ambushed – and any garrison of armed citizenry will now reinforce friendly armies in battle outside their settlement." Agents also receive tooltips for their actions revealing normal and critical success rates.